“In our case, we saw that the birds did not feed the chicks as well as the birds in the quiet area – this was a novel idea that had not been shown before,” Dr Schroeder said. “Obviously, chick provision is strongly linked to chick survival because if they do not get fat then they die.” Noise seemed to interrupt the communication between the young birds and their parents.

I’ve heard about studies that say some bird species aren’t affected by noise pollution, but I’ve always been a bit skeptical. How can living near, say, a freeway not affect you? I’ll bet every species with ears has some part of their life history that’s impacted by noise pollution.